Tuesday, July 5, 2016

Fwd: breaking: Whole Foods and Monsanto try to Derail GMO Labeling

This is unbelievable.

Plan on being at Whole Foods from 10:00-11:30on Saturday the 9th, for the next demonstration organized by ANSWERS Sarasota, a radical millenial group, the next generation of activists. People must be told about this. Whole Foods and Monsanto, teaming up to lie about what is in our food. I knew they were bad actors, but never in my wildest nightmares did I imagine Whole Foods would team up with Monsanto, which has covered the world in toxic chemicals, and now wants to poison us more directly, through the food we eat. It's more than a 4 1/2 acre wetland, at this point. It is Citizens United, which allows corporations like Monsanto to control corrupt members of congress to develop legislation that makes it illegal to sue them for the effects of their poison chemicals. Thousands of small-scale farmers have committed suicide in India over losing their rights to farm because of spurious patent infringement lawsuits brought by Monsanto. These are the people Whole Foods is getting in bed with?

Join me on Saturday the 9th at Whole Foods, downtown Sarasota, corner of 1st and Lemon.

You'll never guess who's selling out your right to mandatory GMO labeling - it's ALL HANDS ON DECK, GMO Labeling is about to die.

This is the darkest moment in the history of the GMO labeling movement and we need you to know what's actually happening in DC behind our backs and who is responsible for it.

Right now we’re being betrayed in Washington D.C. by a group of donation-hungry Senators and a handful of corrupt Corporate Organic Companies that have just brokered an outrageous deal behind our backs in an effort to kill mandatory GMO labeling and make sure that Vermont’s first-in-the-nation GMO labeling bill never takes effect this Friday on July 1st.

Monsanto and Whole Foods’ new fake labeling bill would not only preempt Vermont’s bill from taking effect this week, but ALL provisions of the bill are OPTIONAL and the language is so poorly writtenthat it would actually not include 85%of the current GMO products and ingredientson the market - You know, the ones from the Roundup Ready seeds owned by Monsanto!
Additionally, the deal brokered by Senators Stabenow (D-MI) and Roberts (R-KS) would not provide any penalties for non-compliance, so cannot even be reinforced if violated, by any company if they refuse to label!

A vote on this outrageous bargain is expected any day now - this week - and we can’t allow the most corrupt corporations on the planet to get away with it!Contact your Senators now to tell them that Monsanto, DuPont, Stonyfield, Smucker's and Whole Foods don'tt represent you on GMO labeling.

In reality, this bill was written and approved by Monsanto and America’s most corrupt food companies in a last ditch effort to avoid common sense, mandatory labeling of GMOs, while keeping the doors wide open for a flood of campaign cash from companies such as Monsanto, DuPont, Pepsi, General Mills, Stonyfield, Smucker’s, Organic Valley and Whole Foods’ executives to their campaign coffers. That’s right, there were major corporate organic interests at the table and they just sold us out! (The full details on this deep betrayal of our movement will be forthcoming, but we need to be laser focused right now on killing this dangerously corrupt bargain right now!)

This is an outrage and we can’t allow them to rob our movement of the basic right to know what’s in our food and who’s actually behind the rising exposure to toxic chemicals linked to GMO foods in America.

We need your help today to make sure that Vermont’s historic GMO labeling bill is allowed to go into effect on Friday, July 1st at the end of this week.

For the past 5 years, this community has taken on the most powerful companies on the planet - Monsanto, DuPont, General Mills, Coke and Pepsi - the same companies that are responsible for releasing the planet-polluting chemicals, pesticides and junk foods that harm you and your family's health and future.

So far, because of YOU and your tireless dedication, we’ve stopped Monsanto and the corporate elite in this country 3 times in the Senate in the past 8 months! We keep winning, but every time Monsanto and their corporate allies give us a new sinister bill to rob us of our basic rights. We continue to believe that Victory is our only option. And we desperately need your help to stop this incredible betrayal of America’s food movement!

What we have now confirmed, we are sharing with you today because a handful of corporate-owned organic companies that the organic community has mistakenly trusted over the years have been working against us behind-the-scenes and now publicly support this sham of a backroom deal brokered in the halls of Congress.Whole Foods CEO Walter Robb Climbs in Bed with Monsanto
In the past 72 hours the American GMO labeling movement has been rocked by the most outrageous betrayal imaginable. While you and your friends have been fighting for mandatory GMO labeling, the giant corporate organic companies that are owned by parent companies have just climbed into bed with Monsanto and stuck a knife in the back of every American who’s ever fought for GMO labeling.
According to a Politico story that came out yesterday, Whole Foods CEO Walter Robb joined his friends at Stonyfield, Smucker’s and Organic Valley in selling out the American food movement.

Interviewed while on vacation, Walter Robb is now peddling this monstrous sell out that protects Monsanto’s and Whole Foods profits, to the national media:

An "incredible thing" that the senators came together and compromised during a dysfunctional time. He said he hopes that lawmakers can soon move on to other things. Incredulously,he went on to claim that “we need to…talk about much bigger issues.”

In an even more outrageous lie, Stonyfield Yogurt chairman Gary Hirshberg and founder of the bogus corporate organic front group, Just Label It, who's been working behind the scenes with USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack, former biotech Governor of the Year, is now telling the press:

After years of using Just Label It as a corporate front group to undermine real grassroots campaigns and GMO labeling ballot initiatives and people like you, Gary Hirshberg and Just Label It are finally showing their true colors and working publicly to make it easier for corrupt Senators to vote for this toxic backroom deal that will undermine every American mother's basic right to know what's in the food they're feeding their children, like mothers in 64 other countries around the world already possess.

In reality, it's easy to recognize that this deal brokered last week in DC is a "non-labeling" bill and does nothing to secure your right to know, as we've fought so hard for over many years. Sadly, a handful of corporate organic lobbyists at the Organic Trade Association (OTA) helped broker this deal and are now peddling the lie that it represents what our national GMO labeling movement actually wants your Senators to vote for.

These corporate organic lobbyists know that this corrupt bargain, which protects their corporate parent companies toxic GMO junk foods, will actually leave the vast number of GMO products and ingredients on the market unlabeled and intentionally leaves out some of the newest forms of genetic engineering that companies like Monsanto are now using. This level of intentional corporate sabotage of our rights is the ultimate betrayal, and we can't let it stand or be silent any longer!

More details of this outrageous betrayal will be forthcoming as our movement needs to stay laser focused on defeating this toxic deal in the Senate before they leave for recess on Friday of this week.

For historical reference: This is not the first time Stonyfield, Whole Foods and Organic Valley have worked together to sell out the American public and organic farmers. Remember, there are no accidents in politics.

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